


Devil Wings, Angel Wings

by fireopal77



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Angel Wings, Angst, Brotherly Love, Comfort, M/M, Wing Grooming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-07
Updated: 2020-05-07
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:07:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24053395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fireopal77/pseuds/fireopal77
Summary: This story is inspired by a scene in Season 4, Episode 8. Following Lucifer’s discovery of his grotesquely altered wings he summons a doctor who owes him a favor, and asks him to tattoo some flowers or slap some white feathers on his hideous “moles” to make them pretty. Amenadiel arrives in time to witness the end of this confrontation. When he asks what that was about, Lucifer just brushes it aside. This time, Amenadiel presses for an explanation.
Relationships: Amenadiel & Lucifer Morningstar (Lucifer TV), Amenadiel/Lucifer Morningstar (Lucifer TV)
Comments: 9
Kudos: 87





	Devil Wings, Angel Wings

As the elevator descends, Amenadiel’s finger hovers uncertainly over the button. A troubled frown creases his brow. He had walked into the midst of an angry, emotion-fraught scene between his brother and an obviously terrified dermatologist. The doctor had clearly incurred the Devil’s displeasure. He had rushed out in tears, quaking head to toe. Lucifer had brushed aside Amenadiel’s questions with a quip about needing to get a lock for the elevator, and they had gone on to talk of other things.

On the way up, snatches of dialogue had drifted down to Amenadiel’s supernaturally keen ears, something about Lucifer’s back, and tattooing flowers or slapping some white feathers on something because “they are _hideous!”_ But _what_ was hideous? Had Lucifer mutilated himself by cutting off his wings again? Did his love for Chloe now make him self-conscious about the scars? And there had been a most perplexing mention of moles. But surely no one afflicted with one of these unsightly blemishes would want to draw further attention to it by attaching flowers or feathers to it! Perhaps they had been talking about the small, blind, burrowing creatures instead? But that made even less sense. The whole thing left Amenadiel with an uneasy feeling that something wasn’t quite right.

Amenadiel decisively jabs the button and ascends to the penthouse again.

“What now?” Lucifer groans. His fingers bang a note of sharp, petulant discord down upon the piano keys and he reaches for his whiskey glass.

“You never did tell me what that doctor did to upset you so?”

“You mean besides being bloody useless?”

“Yes, Luci, that’s exactly what I mean.”

Leaning on the piano, Amenadiel spies Lucifer’s drawing. He lifts the sketch pad and examines it. It really is quite good. A bubble of pride rises within his breast and a smile spreads wide across his mouth. Yes, there’s no denying that his little brother has inherited some of his artistic ability. Perhaps he should encourage Lucifer with a gift of one of those art kits containing watercolors and crayons he saw when he was browsing toy stores thinking about the angel-baby growing in the warm, safe haven of Linda’s womb.

“Give that back!” Lucifer lunges across the piano.

“No! Not yet, I haven’t finished looking at—admiring—it. This is really very good, Luci.” Holding it high, out of Lucifer’s reach, Amenadiel continues thoughtfully studying the sketch, this time looking past the skillful execution and focusing on the subject instead.

Hmmm…Now _why_ did Lucifer choose to draw his wings instead of just showing them to the doctor? Was he afraid of dazzling him with their divine splendor and driving the mortal mad? He did seem a rather emotional, unstable character; he’d departed the penthouse a blubbering bundle of nerves. Maybe Lucifer’s sketch alone was enough to send him tottering over the edge? But _why_ did Lucifer need to show this man his wings at all? Perhaps he wanted some tattoos of pretty flowers on the skin around them in a permanent bouquet to dazzle his detective? But surely that could be accomplished without mentioning his wings at all? He need only indicate where on his back he wanted the tattoos put. And what had all this to do with moles—either subterranean mammals or skin blemishes? Blinging out either didn’t make much sense at all. And Lucifer had said something about putting white feathers on something hideous. Well that made even less sense! If he needed white feathers, Lucifer’s wings were covered in them, beautiful, radiant, divine white feathers, far nicer than anything one could find upon a bird or in a craft store. Unless…

“Is something wrong with your wings, Luci?”

Lucifer’s shoulders slump and he avoids his brother’s eyes. After a long silent moment his fingers begin moving slowly over the keys. Amenadiel recognizes the melody—Mendelssohn’s “O for the Wings of a Dove.”

“Lucifer…”

“They are _hideous!”_ Lucifer bangs both hands down hard upon the piano keys. “Too hideous to contemplate! I cannot bear the thought or the sight of them, Brother!”

“Your wings are the most beautiful Father ever created,” Amenadiel reminds him gently. “They are the light of the world.”

“Not anymore!” A sob sneaks out with the words and Lucifer hastily tries to hide it. “No one has described them that way in eons, not since our half-brother decided that _he_ was the light of the world! Everyone’s forgotten…”

“I haven’t,” Amenadiel assures him, “I haven’t forgotten, Luci. All was darkness until Father said ‘Let there be light!’ And then you were born. The light from your wings set the sun on fire, and made the moon shine like silver, so beautiful Father decided to make a city of silver to be our home, and then you hung the sky with jewels—stars brighter and more beautiful than any diamonds.”

A tear drips down onto the tan fingers resting idly on the black and white keys. “Now look what you’ve done—your sentimentality has made me weep, Brother.” Lucifer tries to make a joke of it, but the chuckle accompanying the words wobbles like Jell-O.

“Show me,” Amenadiel says, gently but firmly, “show me your wings, Luci.”

_“No!”_ Lucifer adamantly shakes his head. “Do not ask it of me, Brother! The Devil has wings to match his face now, leave it at that! _Please!”_

“Show me,” Amenadiel insists.

With a sob taffy-stretched between shame and fury, Lucifer rolls his shoulders and slowly unfurls. Huge leathery, naked, featherless wings, reminiscent of a dragon’s or a giant bat’s, emerge from his back. The flesh is deep, dried-blood-red blurring into black, and they are crested with sharps horns that hover menacingly above Lucifer’s head like a malevolent crown poised to descend in a satanic coronation.

A single tear trickles down Lucifer’s cheek and he turns away, unable to bear the horror and revulsion he expects to see on Amenadiel’s face. The magnificent horror of his devil wings droop around him in defeat. The horns drop down to flank his sagging shoulders forming horrific parentheses bracketing the pathetic, wounded creature within. That is what Lucifer sees when he catches his reflection—the vain, proud Devil humbled and defeated.

“How little remains of the angel I once was, save the memory of him. But remembering is only a new form of suffering.” Lucifer bitterly paraphrases Baudelaire and gropes with a trembling hand for his whiskey glass.

There are many things Amenadiel could say, lofty, wise-sounding words the scholar in him could spout, and arguments he could make, about control and self-actualization and hate, but he knows Lucifer won’t hear him. He’s mired too deep in the tar-black, clinging mud of misery. The words won’t penetrate the pea-soup fog of infinite melancholy shrouding his brain, or cut through the thick, ancient, gnarled and twisted scar tissue of self-loathing and injured pride, the callus that has been forming ever since Lucifer fell from Heaven. There _has_ to be another way to reach him! Something stronger and deeper that can speak louder and say more than words.

Like an answer to a prayer, there’s a sudden stirring in Amenadiel’s soul, a memory ages old, treasured more than any miser ever loved gold. The tangle and caress of feathers dark and white, the comfort, security, and warmth, the joy and the glory of love perpetual and undying, soul-flooding light, pure and powerful grace intertwined, hearts beating, lungs breathing, in unison, the majesty and awe of knowing what it truly means to touch the divine. In that moment he knows _exactly_ what Lucifer needs. But to give it to him he’ll have to reach back to the far, far distant past, beyond the things that tore them apart—The Rebellion, the choices they made, facing, yet loving, each other from opposite sides, Lucifer’s Fall, and Amenadiel’s perceived shunning and abandonment of his little brother, while history was written from the viewpoint of the victors, and Lucifer became creation’s greatest villain, tempter and tormenter. All the things that made brotherly love so very difficult, piling layer upon layer of pain until it seemed only the anger, hurt, and, even worse, hatred remained, and all the love that had been between them was cold, dead, and buried.

Amenadiel can only hope, and pray, he will succeed, that what he intends to do will make things better, not worse. No—he has to _believe_ that it will make things better, hope isn’t enough!

Trying not to let his nervousness show, Amenadiel strives for a casual, confident tone. “You just need preening, Luci, that’s all, then you’ll be fine.”

Lucifer’s jaw drops and his hands sink like twin stones onto the piano keys. He favors Amenadiel with the most incredulous stare. A startled laugh catches in his throat. _“Are you blind?_ I haven’t a feather on me!” He brandishes his bare wings, letting the light shine through the ugly translucent skin, highlighting the twisted map of veins.

Amenadiel stands before Lucifer and holds out his hand. “Trust me.”

There’s something in his brother’s voice and eyes that makes Lucifer shiver, and not in a bad, or cold, way.

In a flash, there and gone, so fleeting fast he can scarcely grasp it, he sees himself, back in the days when the world was young and innocent: a laughing, smiling, mischievous, curly-haired angel; a Lucifer who didn’t shy away from embraces; a cherished and adored Lucifer who understood what it meant to love and be loved in return, part of one of the Silver City’s sacred preening pairs, _vasiminip-pala,_ siblings who chose to let no other tend their wings; a proud and shining Lucifer who never doubted his own worth and saw his true value every time he looked in his brother’s eyes. He sees his long, slender fingers swimming and swirling through dark feathers, fascinating blurring shades of charcoal and shadows, even as Amenadiel’s fingers dive and disappear into a cloud of radiant white plumes. Lucifer gasps, his back arches, and the ghosts of his feathers fluff and tremble.

Even though he would much rather forget, because some memories just hurt too damn much, Lucifer remembers what the Act of Love meant before humanity made it into a synonym for sex—something it had _never_ been before. Before humans and even dinosaurs, the first fig, fish, or tender green leaf were even a twinkle in God’s eye, the _true_ , the _divine_ , Act of Love, was all about wings. Like a parched sponge soaking up an endless ocean, an angel’s wings remember every drop of love ever given them; each feather is a marker in the Book of Love, an endless, ancient tome that makes _Gone with the Wind_ look as short and silly as _The Cat in the Hat_. It’s enough to drive an angel who wants to forget he is, or ever was, an angel mad! You can’t run away from love when you carry it on your back all the time. He had to free himself from the torment of all those memories. He wanted to forget, not be perpetually reminded. Like an animal caught in a trap gnawing off its own limb, he had to resort to mutilation, hacking off the emblem of his divinity, to set himself free. That’s the _real_ reason Lucifer cut off his wings. A truth he never speaks and tries to keep even from himself.

The flame of pride flares high, and ancient anger, so long simmering, threatens to boil over. Lucifer wants to slap his brother’s hand away. He wants to lash out and kick and bite and stomp and hit. But, before he can, something stirs deep within, like a long-slumbering serpent slowly uncoiling. His hideous wings spasm sharply, every pore suddenly feels like it is being stabbed with a red-hot needle of Hell steel. A million memories assail him all at once, a herd of howling ghosts trampling over his forced forgetfulness, rattling their chains, demanding to be acknowledged and heard, reminding Lucifer just how much he was once loved…and how much he loved…

Lucifer takes Amenadiel’s hand.

***

Golden skin glowing softly in the lamplight, Lucifer sits naked on his black bed, watching with some amusement as Amenadiel brings a bowl of olives and a bottle of wine and places them reverently, like a sacred offering, on the nightstand. The divine Act of Love is almost as ritualized as a Japanese tea service. There is tradition, love, meaning, and breathtaking beauty in everything. Even the bareness of their skin, _nanisi-namadima_ , to be flesh and feathers, as they called it in the Tongue of Angels, has a deeper, purer, richer meaning, harking back to the innocent time before they knew that they were naked. After all, if clothes don’t exist, nakedness can’t either, and that was how it was before Eve bit the apple. There is comfort, closeness, security, and trust in the warm, intimate innocence of flesh and feathers that existed eons before human carnality, lust, wantonness, and shame, and the discovery of these things didn’t change that.

Amenadiel disappears briefly into the bathroom and returns with an amber glass vial of massage oil clasped in his hands. He looks so earnest and intent, so eager to please as he unfurls his wings, like Mary of Bethany about to anoint Jesus’ feet with the costly oil of spikenard, that Lucifer just has to laugh.

“Are you trying to seduce me, Brother?” he purrs, playfully arching his brows.

He could argue that it’s a valid question. Can they _really_ do this? Since they’re both no longer virgin, are they even capable of the divine Act of Love anymore?

The answer is lying quite literally in Lucifer’s lap—his penis rests dormant and docile, undisturbed by carnal stirrings, unneeded and unnecessary since genitals play no part in the divine Act of Love. He’s surprised by how natural it still feels. All the sex he’s had hasn’t changed anything. A human male would label this lack of lustful response “impotency,” and his feelings would run the gamut of shame, frustration, anger, and alarm. But Lucifer is, and feels, divine. Like a stubborn moon-tugged tide, he can feel grace rising within him, a wave growing in force and intensity, rolling powerfully towards the answering wave of Amenadiel’s grace, anticipating the moment when they will collide.

After he fell, Lucifer plunged headlong into the pool of carnal pleasures, trying to lose himself in a passionate, promiscuous tangle of mortal bodies, but it only made the memories rear up and scream louder, they were always there, haunting him in every feather. He tried to drown them out, to live only for pleasure, and let his penis guide him like a dowsing rod to the next bed or orgy. Only afterwards, lying in a lust-glazed stupor, naked and sweaty, breathing in the humans’ rank, cloying perfumes and wine-sour breath, draped in the deadish weight of their sex-sated limbs, with the clinging vines of their hair sticking to his skin, the unbidden, intrusive remembrance of dark fingers trailing lovingly through white feathers could still make Lucifer gasp and tremble in a way no human caress ever could.

Lucifer enjoys sex, the free and easy fun, the casting aside of all moral shackles and inhibitions, but he’s always innately understood that it isn’t love. When he refers to his partners as lovers, or the sexual act itself as lovemaking, it’s merely for convenience, to observe the social niceties and norms, even though deep down inside it always feels like he’s telling a lie. A frisson of hope tickles his spine. What they are about to do— _if_ it works with these hideous leather beast wings—will transcend every earthly and carnal pleasure, it will make human lovemaking seem like an ant in the shadow of a mountain.

Amenadiel gives him a half-scolding look and reaches out to cup Lucifer’s face gently in his hand, his thumb lightly caressing the dark-stubble.

“You know we are above such things,” he says, his voice soft and serious.

Lucifer leans in, savoring his brother’s touch.

“Indeed we are!” he breathes.

The kiss is so deceptively light, the mere brush of a butterfly’s toes upon a petal, it’s so gentle and chaste, the way a mother would kiss her newborn child, but it sends a rapture of warmth and grace flooding blissfully through every fiber of Lucifer’s being. If he had feathers they would be glowing, the whole room would be drowning in light.

The ghosts of his feathers come back to haunt him, bristling and quivering with longing, _screaming_ to be stroked, rumpled, petted, and preened. He can feel every single one of them down to the tiniest most nascent pin feather shaking and straining. Lucifer feels, and oh how he feels! An agony divine, a hellish ecstasy, these phantom pangs are a torture worse than any demon, or even the Devil himself, could devise. Mazikeen’s fiendish best could not hold a candle to this!

Amenadiel’s fingernails graze and travel lightly over Lucifer’s left wing, lazily following the map of veins, feeling the blood pulse with every beat of his brother’s heart.

With an anguished cry, Lucifer pulls away. It’s too much! It’s just an illusion, that’s _all_ it is—a cruel, heartbreaking illusion! Like the itching elbow that bedevils an armless man. His wings are still horned and grotesquely naked. Monstrous wings for a monster!

“It’s no bloody use!”

“Have patience, we’ve only just begun…”

Lucifer shifts suddenly into full Devil form, to make his body match his wings. His eyes catch fire and blaze flaming red, and every inch of skin becomes flayed and charred, festering, blood-sticky scarlet. Behind his back, the horrible wings rise, and the evil crown of horns hovers over the Devil’s head again.

“Could you love _this?”_ Lucifer demands. “Could you, Amenadiel?”

Amenadiel kneels calmly on the bed before him. His hands reach out to frame Lucifer’s face, to caress and soothe the raw red skin.

“I love my brother,” he says simply, without hesitation, “angel or devil, angel _and_ devil. I always have, in spite of what you may believe, or what I, in my anger and hurt, once thought I believed. And I know this isn’t the _real_ you. This is only a reflection of how you felt after you fell, it is a mask of pain and anger that you can put on or take off as you will. If only you would believe that, Luci!”

The flames in Lucifer’s eyes waver. Doused by tears, they dim to bittersweet chocolate, and he inches closer to his brother. Slowly, tentatively, he leans into the welcoming shelter of Amenadiel’s arms. Like a wild and frightened animal learning to trust again, he lays his head on Amenadiel’s shoulder—the shoulder he used to always say was his favorite pillow. A soft, shuddering sob escapes and then another. Lucifer squeezes his eyes shut tight to try to dam the flow of tears. His shoulders shake, convulsed by sobs. Amenadiel holds him close, enfolded in safe and loving arms and wings. The rough redness recedes from Lucifer’s skin, replaced by smooth, honey tan, and the head clasped by Amenadiel’s palm is covered with dark, disheveled hair again. Lucifer buries his fingers deep in his brother’s feathers and cries for all that he has lost, while dark feathers caress bald bat wings.

“Breathe with me,” Amenadiel whispers soothingly as they lean together heart to heart.

When the tears at last subside and Lucifer is calm again, Amenadiel gently guides him to “turn over and lie down.”

Lucifer meekly obeys. He rolls trustingly onto his stomach and spreads his hideous gargoyle wings.

Uncorking the massage oil is like unleashing a genie from a bottle. The fragrance he’s chosen, a calming lavender-chamomile blend, will either lead to delight or disaster, fond and loving remembrance or a raging kick-ass fight of celestial proportions. But since Lucifer has no feathers, a substitute for preening oil is clearly necessary, and surely, given the circumstances, a soothing scent would be most appropriate.

Lucifer tenses briefly and his nostrils flare, but he says nothing and doesn’t resist. Amenadiel knows their thoughts are in the same place. They’re both remembering a night long, long ago when the earth was still virgin-pure, devoid of dinosaurs, and human beings weren’t even sketches on God’s drawing board, a night when they lay together, feather-tangled and trembling, in a moon-silvered field of lavender.

Tears of bitter mirth prick Lucifer’s eyes. Those who see him as a purely promiscuous creature incapable of deep feelings, long attachments, much less fidelity, would be so surprised if they knew that no one else, angel or human, has ever groomed Lucifer’s wings, only Amenadiel.

Slowly, with a firm, purposeful touch, Amenadiel begins to rub the scented oil into Lucifer’s leathery wings. He schools his mind not to think of the difference, of how it used to be before, and lets kneading take the place of preening.

Gradually, the tension begins to melt from Lucifer’s rigid frame. His wings relax, drooping contentedly, enjoying the unexpected pleasure of this massage. But the memories won’t stay buried, a legion of white ghost feathers rise from their graves, and soon Lucifer is a quivering, shivering, moaning, weeping, wretched, ecstatic, whimpering heap beneath Amenadiel’s fingers.

He never thought he’d feel like this again. There had been so many nights in Hell when Lucifer had awakened suddenly, convinced he could feel his brother’s arms and wings around him, and Amenadiel’s warm, powerful body spooned against his. But the dream always faded so quickly, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t hold onto it. He would lie there until dawn, watching the bleak gray snow of ashes fall, behind the black lace curtains shrouding his regal bed, overwhelmed by a longing he told himself he should no longer feel for the brother who had made their father’s word law, banished him from Heaven, and condemned him to Hell. On such nights Lucifer understood the true torment of Hell. And he knew that if he were to survive, and keep his sanity, he had to slam and bolt the door on all that had been, and learn to hate the one he had loved most of all. He could never forget or forgive.

“You condemned me to Hell,” Lucifer says abruptly, the anger in his voice and sudden red, hot flash of his skin taking Amenadiel by surprise.

“Only to save your life.” Amenadiel gently turns Lucifer to face him. “Look at me, I want you to look in my eyes when I say this, and if you can’t see the truth there, I know you can feel it in your wings, because what I did I did all for love of you. After The Rebellion, Father condemned you to Death by Obliteration. I prayed for your life, Luci, as I have never prayed for anything before or since. He decided to mitigate your sentence to banishment, and I, as First Emissary,” he pauses to swallow back his tears, “had to pronounce sentence upon you. I didn’t want to do it, Luci, it broke my heart into more pieces than there are numbers to count them, but I was afraid…afraid that if I didn’t do it He would change His mind again and I would lose you forever, to the soul-destroying death there is no coming back from. At least in Hell you would be alive, and as long as there is life, there is hope…hope that we would find our way back to each other again, and hope that you might forgive me someday.”

_“Find our way back to each other?”_ Lucifer snorts derisively. “Did I hear you right, Brother? You knew _exactly_ where I was—in Hell! And you left me alone there for a thousand years! I know; I counted the days—all one thousand! There’s a mark scored on my heart for every one of them!”

“Only because I was forbidden! That was the sentence Father passed upon me! I could neither visit you nor pray to you for a thousand years! _Look at me!”_ Amenadiel wrenches Lucifer’s jaw back in his direction. _“Look at me, Lucifer!_ Do you _really_ think anything else would have kept me from coming to you? Do you _really_ think I didn’t want to catch you when you fell, and to be there to comfort you?”

“You would have willingly come to Hell and combed the ashes from my wings?” Lucifer asks, but this time, cutting through the sarcasm there’s a hopeful quaver; they’re the words of someone who wants desperately to believe.

“Every night.” Amenadiel swears, hand on heart. “I came to you as soon as I could, Brother, and I’ve been trying to tell you this ever since. But you were so angry and bitter you wouldn’t, or couldn’t, hear me. And I became angry and bitter too. All we did was hurt each other until we both began to believe we hated each other. And you weren’t the only one who counted the days. After you left, even though you couldn’t hear me, I still prayed to you, every night when I went to sleep I would imagine you there, wrapped in my wings, warm and safe, with your head on my shoulder. Sometimes I would wake suddenly in the night and imagine I could feel you there beside me, but it was just a dream.”

Lucifer flinches, as though he’s just been slapped, and quickly turns away. “I need a drink,” he murmurs shakily, but when he lifts his hand to brush the hair back from his brow he quickly wipes his eyes.

He picks up the bottle of wine, one of the oldest vintages in his collection. A single ancient goblet of hammered silver sits beside it, studded with cabochons of tsavorite, wine-dark garnet, tiger’s eye, and onyx. It is part of the ritual for two to drink from one cup. With a trembling hand, he fills it. But instead of bolting the wine down in a needy, hasty gulp, he turns and offers it to Amenadiel instead.

Blinking in surprise, Amenadiel takes it. He drinks deeply, his eyes on Lucifer all the time. Then comes the true test, when he lowers it from his lips, he turns the goblet, taking great care that his trembling hands don’t cause him to spill it, and solemnly offers his brother the side his lips haven’t touched.

Lucifer accepts it, but before he raises it to his lips, he turns the goblet. And then he drinks, deeply, his mouth covering the cold silver still warm from Amenadiel’s mouth, his eyes never leaving his brother’s face.

_“Ni valapili polo,_ _Esiasch_ (I forgive you, Brother),” he says softly and sets the cup aside.

_“Vazalos,_ _Esiasch_ (Thank you, Brother), I’ve waited so long to hear you say that,” Amenadiel says, tears of joy and gratitude streaming from his eyes.

“Do you forgive me too?” Lucifer asks softly.

“Willingly. But do you forgive yourself?” Amenadiel asks pointedly.

The question surprises Lucifer. He gnaws his lower lip and hesitates uncertainly. “I…I don’t know if I know how…”

Amenadiel reaches out to brush a stray lock of hair back from Lucifer’s brow. “You will,” he says confidently.

“Confess it,” Lucifer laughs, darting his eyes up as Amenadiel fusses with the unruly lock, “you still miss the curls.” That dark halo of perfect piggy-tail spirals that had made Lucifer the darling of so many Renaissance painters, and would have made Shirley Temple, fussing and fidgeting through the nightly bedtime ritual of fifty-six pin curls, hissing, spitting cobra mad jealous.

“Not as much as I miss you…being with you…like this…”

Without thinking, Lucifer reaches out a wing to embrace his brother, but when he sees it, the ugly, veiny membranes stretched between stark bones, he starts to withdraw.

Amenadiel stops him, and the firm staying grip swiftly becomes a stroking caress.

“It’s better with feathers,” Lucifer laments.

“Well…feathers are easier to preen than…” Amenadiel hesitates over the right word, “…non-feathers. But let’s keep going…” he adds encouragingly, gently guiding Lucifer to turn and lie on his stomach again, “I think we’re making progress.”

Soon a rapturous purr is rising from the depths of Lucifer’s throat. He lies contentedly, letting his brother rub his wings, breathing in the soothing entwined perfumes of lavender and chamomile, and remembering all the things he used to want so badly to forget.

He gasps, eyes opening wide with pleasure and surprise, at the sudden glide of warm skin and the sensual sweep of feathers as Amenadiel lays his divine dark-feathered wings over the oil-slick demonic bat wings.

Amenadiel pulls Lucifer up onto his knees, so that they’re kneeling with their wings overlapping, _nanisi-namadima_ , flesh and feathers, naked wings quivering against feathered wings.

Lucifer whimpers and moans and clutches handfuls of dark feathers, his fingernails scraping the tender skin beneath, making Amenadiel shiver and cry out.

Grace courses through their bodies like a live, thrumming current of electricity. They shake and tremble, clinging to each other, hearts beating, lungs breathing, as one.

Tears pour from Lucifer’s eyes. If only he had feathers! Never has he wanted anything more! His barren gargoylesque wings strain and ache with the desire to sprout divine white feathers to tangle, with Amenadiel’s. The frustration and longing is unbearable and Lucifer bites his fist until he tastes blood mingling with his tears.

And then it happens. Lucifer feels his soul rising higher and higher until suddenly it reaches a pinnacle and plummets. Then comes the swift, rushing sensation of falling fast, spiraling in an exhilarating, dizzy, yet oddly fearless panic.

_“_ _Ni dobix_ , _vemasi pim!_ (I am falling, catch me!)” he cries out in the old tongue.

And Amenadiel does, he catches him, one arm firmly encircling Lucifer’s waist, the palm of his other hand pressed protectively over Lucifer’s heart, holding tight as though he’ll never let go no matter what. It’s as though Amenadiel’s hand is reaching through Lucifer’s flesh and bones to cradle his heart and caress his soul. Instead of crashing and burning, Lucifer is caught safe in loving arms and wings. It’s the renewal of a pledge of devotion and brotherly love as old as time. In that moment everything goes white. Lucifer hears the rustle and puff of feathers violently unfurling, and, with a triumphant cry, Amenadiel buries his fingers deep in clouds of white feathers.

The room floods with light and tiny sparks burst and crackle.

As they fall forward, collapsing exhausted onto the bed, a tiny white plume, curling like a smile, drifts down onto the black pillow beside Lucifer’s head.

“We are divine!” Lucifer exclaims, laughing joyously. He feels spent yet gloriously renewed, dead tired, reborn and vibrantly alive all at the same time. He rolls onto his side to face his brother and drapes a rumpled white wing over him.

“Yes we are!” Amenadiel smilingly agrees, spreading a protective wing over Lucifer’s hip.


End file.
